Destiny Review

Hi guys,

Seeing as Destiny is such a large game, I will be breaking this review down into small segments each disecting the components of the game, enjoy!
     Story: You have doubtlessly heard a lot of bad things said about the core story of Destiny, and unfortunately they are all very accurate. There is a minimal plot line in the game, with most levels devolving down to a three wave system of enemys while Dinklebot(your Ghost) does something, using the same floating animation, to a computer. The only reason I stuck the campaign out was for the XP you got at the end of every mission. Before the game came out, we were led to belive that there was a vast and complex lore behind the game, and to some extent there is, but firstly you can't access said lore(in the form of Grimouir Cards) via the game, instead you have to make and connect a new Bungie.net account. And secondly the cards aren't the easiest thing in the world to navigate, I personally want to find out more about the Cryptarchs, but know very little because the Grimouir system is to complex for me to bother to hunt out specific infomation.
      Weapons: The weapons in Destiny are a strange afair, once you get to level 20(which took me 12.5 hours) you want to start collecting Legendary weapons and armour(more on light levels later!). To give you some background, there are five levels of rarity for weapons, White, Green(Uncommon), Blue(Rare), Purple(Legendary) and Exotic(Yellow/Gold). So post level 20 you need Legendary gear to do decent damage to enemys. However the problem is that Legendary weapons feel un-satisfying at least for me, knowing that their is still one rank higher of rarity to earn, I am never quite satisfied with Legendary, this coupled with the fact that Legendarys are basically the weapons you have been using so far in the game, with a higher damage cap and more perks to invest in. Though non of said perks drastically change the wepaons and Legendary rarity. Then we move onto Exotic, which are somwhere between rare and mega rare, the difference with this rarity is luck. I have currently been playing for about 60 hours, I have 4 exotic peices, one weapon bought from Xur(unsatisfyingly), and from an Exotic bounty(to random to be fun), one chest peice as a random reward from the Weekly Nightfall, and my last peice is a chest peice which I got from an exotic engram, which I bought from Xur. I know someone who less than two hours after reaching level 20 had a legendary engram drop from a level 2 enemy, which then got decoded into an Exotic weapon. To sum up my thoughts on the weapons of the game, I wish there were tied to bosses and mini-bosses like with the high end weapons in Borderlands 2.
     RNG: If you don't know RNG stands for Random Number Generater, ie luck. Far too much of this game rests on the shoulders of luck, there is no sure fire way of getting any specific weapons, or armour apart from doing near endless amounts of Tiger Strikes to get Vanguard Marks, or tons of Crucible matches for Crucible matches! You either get lucky with mission reward drops, or level up the Vanguard, who post level 2, gives you a package with legendary gear in every time you level up. You level up the Vanguard by doing a lot of the daily bounties, which get rather repetitive.
     Crucible: Right moving onto the Crucible or PVP in this game, going into the games launch, I was super excited to get into the Crucible, and that was where I thought I would be spending most of my time. That really isn't the case now the game has launched, it's quite a fun side persuit, but I have put very little time into it, I have played a total of around 7 hours in the Crucible. About 4 of those hours were because I was forced to be in there for my Thorn bounty! The largest problem stopping it from becoming awesome, is the lag, the netcode for the game is aweful, and any time you get a kill, the score for that kill won't show up for up to 10 seconds! I've had it where I have got a kill, then been killed, waited for the repawn count down, and only a few seconds after getting back in does the kill notifier pop up! This may not sound like a lot when you are just reading about it, but in person when you are playing it yourself, it is the worst thing that could plague a Multiplayer game in my opinion!
     Gameplay: I know I have been dissing this game a lot, but the moment to moment gameplay of Destiny is very fun and satisfying, the weapons do feel very nice to use, though once you have used one Scout Rifle you have used them all! The enemys are diverse, and unless you spend an extended period of time on one planet, then you won't get fed up of the enemies.
      Replayability: This is a tricky issue to raise for Destiny, becuase it is the most subjective issue in gaming. The amount of fun you have with this game post 15 hours will solely rely on how much you enjoy doing the same activities over and over again. Technically there is an infinite supply of things to do in the game, the daily bounties, daily story mission, weekly strike, weekly Nightfall strike and occasional timed special events will keep certain players busy for many hours. However for some gamers this constant grind fest(Destiny summed up in two words!) will be highly unappealing.Which brings me onto my next point:
     Post Level 20: Once you pass level 20 you will have to aquire special gear which has a new stat on it called Light, with that peice of gear equiped your character will now have as many light points as where on that peice. This is not only a strange system of leveling, but also highly unreliable, as RNG rears its ugly head again, as you could reach level 26 or 27 quite quickly, or someone could take dozens of hours to reach that mark. However long it takes you to get to level 27, you then have to start grinding what are called Ascendant Shards, which are required to rank up you gear to give you more light points. These Shards are very hard and slow to aquire unless you do the Raid frequently, which brings me onto:
     The Raid: On paper the raid in the game, works extremely well, but in practice when you give the game to the real gamers, it falls apart. The Raid is a six man event which will take bare minimum 1.5 hours first time. Put it this way on the first day the Raid was released the first team to complete it took in excess of 11 hours! All in one sitting. Communication is an absolute esential, and you all need to be very experienced players with high rank weapons. Here come the big problem, there is no matchmaking. So you have to personally find five other players who can all sit down with mikes for a good few hours in one go to complete this mission. Now somepeople may argue that you can just play the game without doing the Raid, and yes you can. However whilst doing the raid you can get up to 15 Shards, in a few hours, at the moment I can get up to 4 Shards in 2 hours if I am extremely lucky. Most days I get none. Added on to this the fact that all primary weapons(exotic weapons included) have no elemental damage on them, ie Solar, Arc and Void. But if you play the Raid enough, you will get a whole host of primary weapons with elemental damage on them. Effectivly, think of the Raid weapons as Exotic(they are Legendary) weapons that you can use 3 of(you can only equip one exotic weapon). These high teir weapons really come into their own when you do the Nightfall Strike, which always(bar one week in ten so far) has a burn on them, which means that a specific elemental damage deals around 300% extra damge, both dealt by you and the enemies. At the end of the Nightfall Strike, you are guaranteed high rank gear, be in legendary or exotic gear, or Ascendat materials, or Strange Coins, all of which will come in very usefull. The clincher come when you put 2 and 2 together and work out that if you do the raid enough, you are given a much, much easier time of the Nightfall than someone who hasn't done the Raid. This coupled with the fact that you can only get to level 30(the max rank pre-DLC) by earning the very rare and random drops of Raid armour from the various chests and enemies in the Raid. All told the Raid makes a very large part of the game unplayable for far to many people(myself included) for the amount of time and energy Bungie put into it! My last note on the issue is this, according to the Playstation trophies a mear 13% of players who have Destiny have completed the Raid!
      Round Up: Although I have bashed this game alot, it is still a very fun game to play, and one that will suck a lot of time from you if you give in to it. You can spend fun filled hours, doing Strikes, Crucible, Exotic and normal Bounties, material farming and more. The most important thing to bare in mind with this game, is that it will get better, multiple patches are in the works as we speak(write?), the next one which will be out by the release of The Dark Below(the first DLC), which will give a drastic change to all Exotic weapons. Bungie are one of the best developers out there for listening to thier audience, changes for a ton of stuff are in the pipework, and I have near total faith in Bungie to bring Destiny up to the level that I know it can be; we just have to wait.
My total review score for Destiny is: 8.5/10, with the capacity for Bungie to make it a solid 10/10.
Thank you very much for reading my long ramblings, check back soon for more new content!
Ed

E3 2014: What To Expect

Hi guys,
 The time is nearly upon us, the time when all players unite under the banner of proud gamers. I'm sure you are aware that I am talking about E3, the global trade show where we are treated to an insight of what we will all be playing later this year in into the next! So I thought I would give all you internetians a run down of the games we know will be at E3, and the ones I suspect will be there. Without further ado let the predictions commence:

  Battlefield Hardline: If you have kept your eye on my site recently you will have read my thoughts on the announcement trailer for the next Battlefield game. If you haven't had a chance to watch the trailer then you can rectify your mistake at the EA conference(which is live at 8:00 PM on Monday the 9th of June) where the trailer will be officially released. Bearing in mind the trailer has already leaked I wouldn't be surprised to see some extra gameplay to be able to show something new for everyone who has already see the trailer.

  Destiny: This game is probably my highest anticipated game of the year(because we don't have many facts about BF Hardline), so I can't wait to see what new Destiny we will be receiving. I believe new Destiny gameplay will be shown off during the Playstation conference at 2:00 AM UK time on Tuesday the 10th of June. Bungie are absolute masters of feeding us enough information to stop us going insane but not enough to stop you coming back for more. I believe and hope that E3 will start the beginning of harder facts coming out the doors of Bungie, but for that, we will have to wait.

  Assassins Creed Unity: This year all Assassins Creed fans are being treated to 100% more Assassins games coming from Ubisoft, yes that is right we will be getting one AC game for last gen consoles, and then Unity will be gracing the walls of next generation owners. Last year at E3 Ubisoft dropped the non to small bomb shell of naval combat on us. That led on to be an integral part of the game, so what will they be treating us to this year? I wouldn't go in expecting as much of a game changer as the naval combat, but I would like to see the introduction of a new gameplay mechanic that we haven't seen before. What ever we see, it will be at 9:00 PM on Monday the 9th of this very month!

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare: As with every E3 for as many years that I have seen, Activision and this year Sledgehammer Games will show of 1-2 single player missions for us to watch in irritation that they haven't shown us the thing that everyone buys the game for, the multiplayer. I would really like to see Sledgehammer games burst out of the fence and show us a multiplayer match played directly from the show floor. No matter what we are show it will with a doubt be at the Xbox conference which is on at 5:30 PM Monday the 9th of June!

  The Division: Last E3 the crowds were stunned into silence when we got our first look at The Division at Ubisofts conference, ever since then the information scene has been desolate. This scene took a turn for the worst when it was announced that the game was being pushed to 2015, I suspect we will be seeing this game on our shelves around this time next year. Delays aside, E3 should signify the start of the trailer tirade that Ubisoft are known for, which isn't always a bad thing. We should be seeing a brand new demo at the Ubisoft conference(which is on at 11:00 PM Monday the 9th of June) and maybe get a solid release date, but I doubt that immensely!

  Batman Arkham Knight: This game was announced out of the blue only a few months ago, but within hours of it being announced it had shoe horned it's way into many people top games of the year list, mine included. I am fairly confident in saying that we will be seeing more of this game in less than 2 weeks let's hope Rocksteady have got some awesome battle arena gameplay to show us!

 The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt: Now that we know that this  beast of a game will be released on February the 24th of next year, it is unlikely we will be seeing any more of this game during the period of E3, however there is a possibility that we will get another trailer, or maybe even a gameplay walkthrough! This game probably won't be appearing at any of the conferences, so keep your eye of any videos coming from CD Projeckt RED's doors.

  Dragon Age Inquisition: I must admit to never having played a Dragon Age game, but ever since Mass Effect 3 changed my perspective on how a game can tell its story, I have been eager to play any other games from Bioware. I would really like to see some more gameplay for this game. When the game is being released in October it wouldn't be too much to expect to see a sizable chunk of gameplay shown off at EA's conference.

  Evolve: This is one of the few games that I have gone from very little excitement to one of my top 3 games coming this year. The scope of the game is truely asstonishing, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. I have never played games similar to Left for Dead so this game will be an introduction into a new genre of games, and I am waiting with baited breath for the game to hit our shelves. No matter how good the game will be I expect to see this game making an appearance at E3, maybe we will see it at one of the 2 main conferences(Microsoft and Playstation) but we may just get some over the shoulder gameplay taken from a demo on the show floor, though we don't even know if we will be getting our hands on that!
  So that brings me to the end of my run up to E3 2014, as always the star of the show will be the games that we haven't yet seen at all, so no matter your console preference you really should tune into all of the conferences, I know I will be!
 On one last note, I would like to list the games that I hope will be at E3, but we don't know a single damn thing about them, Mass Effect 4, Bioshock 4, Elder Scrolls VI, Fallout 4 and The Next XCOM Game.
Thank you very much for reading if you are planning to be vocal about your thought through out E3 please bear in mind that this expo is for gamers all together, not just fanboys and fangirls of one console.
Ed
What games are you looking forward to seeing? Let me know if the comments!

Run up to E3 2013: Part 1

Hi guys
 As I'm sure you are aware E3 is approaching, this I would say is the biggest gaming event of the whole year, and this year I thought I would make sure that going into E3 you would know what games you want to keep an eye on. In this first post on E3 I will be talking about Watch_Dogs, Assasssins Creed IV and Destiny, I will be covering some Xbox games as well in a future post, so be sure to check back soon.                                                                 

Watch_Dogs

First up is Watch_Dogs, this game is set in the city of Chicago which is all being controlled by a computer called the ctOS which you just happen to have access to. That will mean that you will be able to hack ATM machines, stop trains, raise bollards, and I'm sure much more. We know very little at the moment about what drove Adian Pearce(The main character) to do what he did, but that is I'm sure what we will be hearing about at E3. All we know now is that there is a family involved somewhere along the road. This is a game that will be launching November 22nd 2013, for current gen and PC, it could be the same date for the PS4 release, but for now we don't know.

Assassins Creed IV Black Flag

Next on in the spot light is Assassins Creed IV Black Flag, this is a game that I am very much looking forward to. It will see our totally new Assassin Edward sailing the seven seas in search of all the best pirate loot. We haven't seen any actual in game footage of this game, but we should be seeing some at E3. I am also very certain there will be a playable demo for any of you who are going. Those of you with a keen memory will remember that last year at Sonys press conference we saw the naval battles for the first time. I doubt it will be more Naval gameplay because we have seen it before. However I wouldn't write of there being some exclusive AC gameplay at Sonys press conference.

Destiny

Last up for today is Destiny, now this game we have see the least about. We saw a very short trailer at the announcement of the PS4 but since that we have seen nothing except a dev diary. I am very excited about this game, it is from the publisher of CoD and the developers of Halo, surely a recipe for success if ever there was one. This is almost certain to feature at Sony press conference this year, and I can't wait to hear more about it.

      That's it for now but I will be talking about other games in the lead up to E3, so do check back soon to read more.

Thanks for reading

Ed

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PS4 Conference Breakdown Part 7: Destiny

Hi guys

We already new about this game before the PS4 conference but we didn't know that it would be coming to the PS4 as well as PS3 and Xbox 360. If you haven't already seen the trailer from the conference here it is:

Let me give you some more info on this game if you don't already know it, it will be an FPS MMO, it will be set in the future and it is being made by the creators of Halo, Bungie. If you your PS3 from your Xbox 360 you will know that Halo and Bungie are-or were- and Xbox exclusive company, even the fact that they turned up to the PS4 press conference is pretty impressive. I also know that this game will feature competitive multiplayer aswell as the traditional MMO gameplay. We don't yet know if the competetive is simply a PvP area or something more complex like TDM and the like. One interesting part of this game is the fact that the music is being written and composed by three people one of whom is Sir Paul Mccartney This game has the potential to be amazing, and I am eagerly awaiting its release later this year on PS3 and PS4. Bungie have side-stepped all questions about if PS3 players will be able to interact with PS4 players.
Thats all for now, thanks for reading.
Ed